This collection gathers short stories written in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s. They are comic, ironic tales of desire, vanity and deception, in which characters play games of seduction and pretence that slip out of their control. A young man's hoax, a doctor's reputation, and a teacher's small lies all reveal how fragile and absurd people can be. The stories show Kundera's wit and his early interest in the themes of his later novels.